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General => Users => Topic started by: freymann on July 23, 2008, 09:02:31 pm

Title: Re: Amazon Search = SLOW
Post by: freymann on July 23, 2008, 09:02:31 pm
Is anyone else finding Amazon's db slow to respond. It does not matter what type of serach I enter, could be keyword, title, actor, director. I do try to do this in off peak hours like late late at night or very early in the morning but it seems to make no difference I am still seeing a sometimes a minute and a half for a response sometimes longer. I try to be as specific about the title as I can.

 Hi Dave.

 No, my Amazon lookups go very fast. I just did a couple searches a few minutes ago. Works like a charm here.
Title: Re: Amazon Search = SLOW
Post by: colinjones on July 24, 2008, 12:54:58 am
depending on what search criteria I plug in, it can take upto 20 seconds, often only 10 seconds - but it certainly can be sluggish for some searches
Title: Re: Amazon Search = SLOW
Post by: colinjones on July 25, 2008, 10:23:45 pm
no, port forwarding is only for inbound-initiated connections. When a new connection is initiated from the Internet to your public IP address, the router has no way of knowing where to send it without a fixed NAT/PAT/port-forward. Upnp can also provide this these days if the router supports it.

In the case of this type of look up, the connection is initiated from the core outbound. The router NATs this behind it's public IP address with a new source port number. So when traffic returns from Amazon on that connection to that port, the router already knows exactly where to send the traffic and on which TCP connection. No port forward required - in fact port forwards are ignored when processing inbound traffic on extant connections so setting one up wouldn't do anything anyway.

Sorry that isn't it!
Title: Re: Amazon Search = SLOW
Post by: royw on July 26, 2008, 01:01:37 am
When the search is really slow, how is your normal internet connection performance?  Maybe run broadband speed tests.  My experience is that the slowdowns were related to ISP/network issues and not amazon.com.

HTH,
Roy
Title: Re: Amazon Search = SLOW
Post by: colinjones on July 26, 2008, 02:21:24 am
try speedtest.net it's very good. If you choose a node near you and still get up or down speeds widely varying from your router's sync speed you may have a lot of packet loss or worse your ISP is over subscribing you local DSLAM very heavily. Also, be aware that putting a lot of TCP connections through broadband routers often starves their resources and dramatically impacts performance. This is very easy to do with bittorrent clients if you leave a lot of files seeding.
Title: Re: Amazon Search = SLOW
Post by: royw on July 26, 2008, 09:33:38 pm
Is the Amazon a hard coded thing or a scraper of some kind. How hard or wha would be the issue with using IMDB. What would have to be done to use imdb I guess is what I am asking, DEVS! now be nice this is just a question.  ;D

Checkout the source, then grep for amazon.  You will notice there are quit a few php files that match.  Looking in them you will notice that they are using amazon's web API (basically exchanging xml fragments over http).  In my quick scan, I didn't see where the search is called on disk insertion, but seem to recall it using the local web server to use the php scripts.

HTH,
Roy
Title: Re: Amazon Search = SLOW
Post by: tschak909 on July 27, 2008, 03:11:14 am
that's because Amazon isn't used for local disk insertions.

Instead, a media identifier is used, in particular, the External Media Identifier is used.

We do not have source code for this part, it's built privately at pluto, and it uses Windows Media Services to extract metadata.

Compared to the Amazon cover art scan, a lot more metadata is grabbed, in particular: chapter titles, better quality cover art, etc.

-Thom
Title: Re: Amazon Search = SLOW
Post by: royw on July 27, 2008, 05:15:08 am
Ah, so it's Windows Media Services I should be blaming for mis-identifying a disk as part of a multi-pack or furnishing an incorrect title.  ;)

I knew the images were coming from WMS, just didn't catch that the meta-data was too.

Thank you for the clarification.

Have fun,
Roy